Ak’chamel
For over 15 winters, the name Ak’chamel has drifted like smoke through the underground-a thing half-seen, yet impossible to forget. Wearing nightmarish costumes and engaging in hallucinatory ceremonies; their singular sound comprising desert-scorched psychedelia, post-apocalyptic shamanism, and lo-fi ritual-folk is as unique as the physical theater of their live performances. They have released dozens of cassettes, several vinyl records, and a handful of cryptic VHS tapes. Their ungodly reels have been seen by millions yet understood by few. The group remains veiled in mystery, yet they tour often-through the United States, Canada, and Europe; bringing their unearthly plague to the world. Instagram · Bandcamp · YouTube
YHWH Nailgun
The quartet of Zack Borzone (vox), Jack Tobias (synth), Sam Pickard (drums), and Saguiv Rosenstock (guitar) display an innate ability to translate a primitive spirit into a modern form. Born during the lockdown as an experimental project between Borzone and Pickard in Philadelphia, the group expanded as the two moved to New York, adding Tobias for their debut self-titled EP, which was produced by Rosenstock, who was then integrated into the band. That first collection is one of self-discovery, of finding the tools necessary to make songs within the band’s own ecosystem. They honed in on their own world and their collaborative, close-knit writing process, discovering the essential structures and feelings that make YHWH Nailgun. Website
Whitney
Whitney return to the road in 2026 with a North American tour celebrating their forthcoming fourth studio album Small Talk (out November 7, 2025). Formed in Chicago in 2015 by Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek, the band has earned a devoted following for their soulful blend of tender melancholy and radiant warmth. Their debut Light Upon the Lake introduced Whitney with the beloved single “No Woman,” earning Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music designation and praise for its “near flawless… low-key perfectionism.” Nearly a decade later, the band continues to evolve while preserving the intimacy and spirit that made them so cherished from the start. On this run, Whitney will share new songs from Small Talk alongside fan favorites, bringing their signature mix of laid-back charm and intricate musicianship to stages across the US and Canada, with stops in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Toronto, Montreal, and more. “If you’ve ever seen Whitney live, you already know what a treasure their performances are. The Chicago-based outfit, led by the effortlessly cool Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek, has a gift for crafting songs that feel both timeless and deeply personal – sunny yet melancholic, tender yet bold.” – We Write About Music Website · Threads · YouTube · Facebook · Instagram
Carbon Leaf
Carbon Leaf’s fifteenth studio album, Time is the Playground is both a call to action and an embrace of the moment. Marrying nostalgic storytelling to nuanced, folk-infused indie rock, the Richmond, Virginia band embroiders heartfelt melody and harmony with acoustic and electric instrumentation to create a 12-song rumination on time, love and personal growth that’s equal parts urgent epiphany and contented exhalation. “Everybody says people don’t listen to albums anymore,” mulled Carbon Leaf frontman Barry Privett, holed up in a coastal cottage. “So, the challenge for us was to make something that felt good to get through from beginning to end … to listen to like a story.” Originally formed as a college cover band in 1992 and with over 3,500 famously enthused live shows together, Carbon Leaf helped to define the aughts indie rock that they ultimately outgrew and outlasted. They first earned national recognition with “The Boxer,” a song that won the American Music Awards 2002 New Music Award and made Carbon Leaf the first unsigned band to perform before millions on the AMAs. “The Boxer” entered regular radio rotation, Carbon Leaf’s tours grew bigger and better, and within a couple of years they quit their day jobs and inked a record deal. The band’s fanbase snowballed, drawn to their infectious spirit of commitment, empathy, communion, and self-reliance – not to mention supremely crafted songs with ultra-relatable, thought-provoking lyrics. After a trio of charting albums for Vanguard Records, multiple songwriting awards and headlining shows, Carbon Leaf opted to return to the complete creative control of their indie roots. Guitarist Terry Clark, who co-founded the band with Privett and multi-instrumentalist Carter Gravatt, converted his garage into the band’s Two-Car Studio, where they’ve recorded releases for their own Constant Ivy imprint ever since. Carbon Leaf’s DIY spirit even extended to re-recording their three Vanguard albums in order to regain the rights. Due in September, Time is the Playground is Carbon Leaf’s first full-length album in a decade, during which they released two EPs and a 27-song live performance album and Blu-ray. Time is the Playground gathers the best of songs written, in fits and starts, over 15 years, alongside brand new ideas. Privett dusted off old demos and shut himself away for months to finish their stories, while also honing recent compositions. With Clark engineering, Carbon Leaf – completed by longtime bassist Jon Markel and drummer Jesse Humphrey – spent a year and a half recording and mixing the resulting songs. “Thinking about these disparate pieces of music, I began ruminating on time itself,” Privett recalled. “The band’s been together a long time. You mature a bit and see yourself in place on the timeline … rolling around the scenes of love and growth.” Masterfully melding saturated AC/DC guitar and squelchy Cars synth, “Backmask 1983” is a fun flipbook of evocative era emblems – Farah Fawcett, “Satanic Panic,” Time Life Books, Bigfoot and more – that traverses the simultaneous nexus of Privett’s childhood/adolescence and the world’s analog/digital ages. It’s about morphing into a new person and a new planet with wide-eyed wonder and a longing to believe. Website · Facebook · Instagram · Spotify
The Arcadian Wild – Make It Out Alive Tour
The Arcadian Wild is an indie folk/pop group from Nashville, TN, led by songwriters Isaac Horn, Lincoln Mick and Bailey Warren, The Arcadian Wild confidently inhabits and explores an intersection of genre, blending the traditional with the contemporary. Combining elements of confessional pop, folk, progressive bluegrass, and formal vocal music, The Arcadian Wild offer up songs of invitation; calls to come and see, to find refuge and rest, to journey and wonder, to laugh and cry, to share joy and community and sing along. Website · Facebook · Instagram
School of Rock Chapel Hill House Band Senior Sendoff
FREE and Open to the Public, but $10 donations at the door are kindly requested and gratefully received to help cover fees for students with financial need. Thank you for your generosity. Website · Instagram · Facebook
Two Runner
Amid the excitement and ambiguity of a new start, Paige Anderson of Two Runner poses poignant questions on Porchlight, her resolute and tenderhearted new record. Beautiful string arrangements, intimate confessionals, and rollicking hymns for the lost and determined, here is an artist who’s been on the road consistently since early childhood – with persistence and commitment to her craft clearly in no short supply. Porchlight offers tunes that are warm and steady, relatable nostalgia twinged with the ache of needing to move on. The result aptly links the uncertainty of letting go and simultaneous resolve of someone faced with no other choice. A destiny perhaps sealed from an early age, as Anderson began her touring career in a six-person family bluegrass band from the age of nine. Now nearly a decade into her own music career, she’s seen stages warming up for Sierra Ferrell, Watchhouse and Molly Tuttle. Although change often comes en masse, it is surreal and jarring to start again. Paige Anderson offers Two Runner as solace and escape for those needing to reset, with sage comfort and kindness from her own accounts, the way all great songwriters do. Porchlight is perhaps best summed up by the chorus in track five, ‘Mocking Crow’: “Wake up tomorrow, there’s no in between – your heart knows what you need.” A reckoning, a stark look in the mirror, hope, and forward movement against all odds. Website · Facebook · Instagram · YouTube
Rafael Green performs Pink Moon, Georgia Moon performs Blue
This is a seated show. Rafael Green is a progressive-folk/art-rock songwriter currently based in the Triangle area of North Carolina. He was born in Essen, Germany to musician parents and spent his early years in Wraysbury, England while his mother taught at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. After moving to Tucson, Arizona, Green began showing an interest in playing an instrument and acquired his first guitar. He discovered a love for performing and songwriting in junior high school and, after graduating from high school, attended Berklee College of Music where he studied guitar, voice, arranging, production, and songwriting. He graduated with honors in 2013 and shortly thereafter moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he performed in various bands alongside fellow alumni. His songwriting style borrows from English folk and rock bands as well as progressive rock and classical guitarists such as Andrés Segovia and Leo Brouwer. Instagram Georgia Moon is an artist, writer, and multi-instrumentalist from the foothills of North Carolina. She started on piano at age four with a classical teacher who thought ragtime was too contemporary, taught herself alto saxophone at age ten, but it was the hum of the guitar that truly drew her in. She has long confessed that singing Joni Mitchell songs in her childhood bedroom is how she found the courage to perform in front of others in the first place, and the importance of Mitchell’s excavating lyricism and melodic explorations cannot be understated in terms of understanding Moon’s own songwriting. She recorded her first demo of original songs in her hometown of Winston-Salem at age eighteen and she’s been playing gigs in bands and as a solo musician ever since, picking up more instruments in her travels around the American south, England, and western Michigan. Her self-titled EP was recorded and released in 2019, and several other musical offerings have additionally been birthed to the world including the full-band EP Linger Longer, which was released May 31st, 2026. A forthcoming solo album Fare Well is also due at the end of September 2026. Since her return to North Carolina in 2020, she has found camaraderie among the multitude of musicians who call the Triangle home – especially with Crazy Chester, Carrboro’s homage to The Band and The Last Waltz, with whom she has performed annually as Joni Mitchell and saxophonist. This performance of Joni Mitchell’s iconic 1971 album Blue is the culmination of thirty years of Georgia Moon’s devotion to music, and is a natural offshoot of her participation in Crazy Chester before the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Last Waltz concert this Thanksgiving. Website
Johnny Sunrise and the Clouds · With Love · Nicole Tester
Hailing from Western Massachusetts and now based in Carrboro, North Carolina, Johnny Sunrise is an indie folk rock singer-songwriter who draws inspiration from love, longing, the “quarter-life crisis,” and the uncertainty of life. Although Johnny grew up with music primarily as a drummer, his unforeseen travels up and down the East Coast and the isolation caused by the pandemic brought him closer to his neglected guitar. Johnny is now joined by the uber-talented trio Marco “Paco” Marvelli (lap steel), Gabby Messner (bass), and Jake Richter (drums), whose contributions take the live show to another level. Johnny has carved a place in the NC triangle music scene over the past couple of years, performing original songs with honest lyrics and a soulful voice. Always with a smile and a healthy dose of banter. Website · Instagram · Bandcamp
The Brook & The Bluff: The Werewolf Tour
The Brook & The Bluff return to their rock & roll roots with Werewolf – a high-voltage, live-inspired album that turns up the amps, pushes the tempo, and howls in four-part harmony. Fueled by the sharp songwriting and stacked vocals that have defined their catalog, the collection captures the raw, supercharged energy of the band’s concerts.After nearly a decade of nonstop touring – earning hundreds of millions of streams with fan favorites like “Halfway Up” and “Everything Is Just a Mess” – the band regrouped in Nashville, meeting every morning to write and rehearse like their early days in Birmingham, Alabama. Life unfolded in the background: weddings, divorces, real-world growing pains. Inside the room, it was all music.The band channels the swamp rock spirit of legendary artists like Creedence, Petty, and The Eagles, delivering loud, melodic, deeply human songs like lead single “Super Bowl Sunday” – a crashing, introspective anthem about ego and emotional blind spots. “The goal was to treat the record like a live set,” says frontman Joseph Settine. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.Armed with a new album and an unflinching spirit, The Brook & The Bluff are ready to hit the road again to continue their 2026 Werewolf tour. The band boasts a history of sold out headline tours across the continent, a number of major festival performances, and have supported artists like Noah Kahan, Mt. Joy, The Avett Brothers, Ashe, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise. Website · Instagram · Facebook · Spotify · YouTube